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Bishopsgate, EC2N

Place Name

This road led to one of the four original gates of the City of London for more than 1500 years. Built by the Romans sometime around the year 200 and thought to be part of Ermine Street which ran from London to York via Lincoln, it did not get its name until nearly five centuries later. It is generally agreed that the newly rebuilt gate was named after a Bishop of London, Erkenwald, son of Offa, King of Mercia, who lived in the 7thCentury. By the time of the Domesday Book of 1086 it was referred to as Porta Episcopi (gate of the bishop) and by 1275 as Bishopegatestrete and Busshoppes gate Strete sometime in the mid-16thCentury. The gate was knocked down in 1760.